Modern Greek Literature

Critical Essays

Gregory Nagy, Anna Stavrakopoulou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135576677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The essays collected in Modern Greek Literature represent the work of young scholars as they expand the range of approaches to modern Greek literature. The contributors vary in their focus from comparative studies to the study of religion or the literature of diaspora. The theoretical questions that the essays raise address both classic and contemporary debates, from genre explorations to the relationship between literature and national identity. Each contribution to this volume represents a fresh look at Greek literature and opens a distinct pathway for further research and consideration. From this collection will arise innumerable opportunities to gain a newer and deeper understanding of a great literary tradition.

Chapter 1

Ancient Models and Novel Mixtures: The Concept of Genre in Byzantine Funerary Literature from Photios to Eustathios of Thessalonike

PANAGIOTIS A.AGAPITOS

In the spring term of 1986, Margaret Alexiou, having just arrived at Harvard as the new George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, gave a seminar on death in Greek culture. The passionate, humorous, and scholarly manner in which she discussed cultural, anthropological, and literary issues in the seminar— without disturbing the educational aim of the course—proved one of my most important academic experiences at Harvard. It was during that seminar that I first attempted to approach Byzantine funerary texts as literary works of art, and it was out of that attempt that my first article on a literary topic came into being. Gradually, the idea of a broader study on the Rhetoric of Death in Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries emerged; the present paper forms part of this study in progress.

Since that spring fifteen years ago, we have all travelled a long way along the spiral motions of our individual lives, while some good friends— Ole, Robert, Alexander—sailed for even remoter shores, where only faintly does the noise of our world resound. Yet between the points of departure and arrival lie the wide fields of memory, where images, sounds, tastes, texts, and feelings are transformed into the fertile soil nourishing our souls. Allow me then, dear Meg, to place this essay as a small offering in the book-shaped basket containing the fruits of a rich and varied harvest, not only as a momentary gesture of gratitude but, even more so, as a reminder of a friendship across the expanses of time and space.

Memory of the dead is a notion central to man’s relation to death and, thus, one of the chief public and private functions of funerary literature is to remember the deceased. Within the broader frame of funerary literature, the funeral oration or epitaphios logos is a genre devoted specifically to the praise of the dead. Moreover, the epitaphios is a genre of “applied rhetoric” because it encompasses texts composed for a specific occasion and in most cases for a specific audience.¹ Its formal history begins in a well-known context: to praise the fallen soldiers of the Athenian democracy during the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides in Pericles’ funeral oration (2.35–46) places an anonymous group in the text’s center and reflects on the collective mentalities about death; we are here concerned with a public celebration of a public event.² Many decades later, Isocrates composed a funeral oration on King Evagoras of Cyprus (oral. 9).³ Isocrates places in his oration an eponymous individual in the text’s center and reflects on the individual’s contribution to public life; we are here confronted with a private celebration of a public figure. This difference between the Thucydidean and the Isocratean epitaphioi was already recognized by later commentators,⁴ and then desribed by teachers of rhetoric, such as Pseudo- Menander⁵ and Pseudo-Dionysius,⁶ both authors of technical manuals on the composition of speeches.

In fact, these four works—two actual funeral orations and two technical handbooks—practically constituted the foundation on which early Byzantine rhetoric placed its own funerary production. The fourth century, in particular, brought forth some of the most famous examples of the genre. On the one hand, we have a strong pagan tradition: Himerius in Athens (orat. 8)⁷ and Themistius in Constantinople (orat. 20)⁸ composed funeral orations on their deceased son and father respectively, while Libanius in Antioch wrote his grand funeral oration for Julian (orat. 18).⁹ On the other hand, we have a growing production within a Christian context; Gregory of Nyssa wrote three funeral orations,¹⁰ Gregory Nazianzen another four.¹¹

When looking at these texts one thing becomes immediately clear. The funeral oration gradually moves away from the open domain of public experience within the polis and shifts towards the closed domain of private life within the principality. From Thucydides’ political declaration of represented democracy in the city state of Athens we move to Himerius’ personal declaration of represented emotions in Athens of the late Roman Empire. This social narrowing is paralleled by a literary broadening because the epitaphios opens up its static representation of public life to include the dynamic narrative of private life. From Lysias’ celebration of the politics of the Corinthian War (orat. 2) we move to Libanius’ story of the last pagan emperor.

Beyond the funeral oration, usually declaimed at the first yearly commemoration of a person’s death, there were two further types of orations connected to death. One was concerned with lamentation and was termed monodia. This prose lament—for example, the monody written by Libanius on the news of the death of Julian (orat. 17)¹²—was a shorter piece of direct emotional expression and was usually delivered at the funeral of the deceased; it is thematically connected to lamentation in ritual contexts.¹³ The other type delt with consolation and was called paramythetikos logos. It was also a shorter piece, usually delivered after the funeral to the family of the deceased, aimed at persuading them to desist from excessive sorrow and to give them directions for their future lives. Such is the consolatory oration by Gregory of Nyssa on the death of the young princess Poulcheria, daughter of Emperor Theodosius and his wife Flacilla.¹⁴ Held together by the notion of memory for the deceased, epitaphios, monodia, and paramythetikos form a funerary triad that follows from different perspectives and with different functions the process of life’s closure, giving it expression in social terms through a regulated literary discourse.

As funerary categories, lamentation and consolation also took other shapes than the rhetorically defined monodia and paramythetikos. Lamentation, for example, could assume a longer poetic form, such as Bion’s Epitaphios for Adonis in Hellenistic literature,¹⁵ but it was mostly expressed through the microform of the funerary epigram.¹⁶ Similarly, consolation could be expressed through epistolographic discourse. The letter of consolation became a favorite vehicle for the contemplation of death and its impact on human life in a direct communicative channel between author and addressee.¹⁷

Among men of letters in the fourth century, it is Gregory Nazianzen who composed works in almost all canonical forms of funerary literature. His Funeral oration on Basil the Great (orat. 43) is one of the most celebrated examples of an epitaphios logos for a public figure—delivered, moreover, by a close friend and an equally public person.¹⁸ At the same time, Gregory’s epitaphios on his sister Gorgonia (orat. 8) represents the typical private funeral oration. Exemplary are his letters of consolation, such as the one he sent to Gregory of Nyssa on the death of the latter’s companion Theosebia (epist. 197).¹⁹ Gregory’s funeral orations and letters of consolation reflect a public discourse because, even if they concern individuals with whom Gregory had a private relationship, the texts employ the narrative and encomiastic patterns of public mortuary typology.

Whenever Gregory chose to use a private discourse for funerary matters, he expressed himself through the funerary epigram. Book eight of the Greek Anthology, exclusively devoted to Gregory, offers a broad selection of such private funerary epigrams.²⁰ The dense style, metrical complexity, and introspective character of the epigram give to the poems a texture very different from the style of a funeral oration. This private discourse, compressed in the epigram’s minuscule form, excludes typological categories of a narrative character and concentrates on lingering feelings of sorrow and fleeting images of death. Taking Gregory as a sensitive representative of his age, we can broadly say that in early Byzantium poetry is used for the private style of funereal discourse while prose reflects its public style.

At this point, it should be stated that genre studies have not been a favorite among Byzantinists.²¹ The tacitly-assumed reason is that, with the brilliant exception of the kontakion, there exist no Byzantine genres but rather ancient genres languidly continuing their miserable existence for some thousand years.²² Consequently, in the few instances where a genre has been studied, the main purpose is to collect and to classify the material in a purely taxonomic fashion sub specie antiquitatis. Should literary interpretation be involved in such an approach, it usually is an attempt to detect the unifying common elements of a genre and its potential variations....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Ancient Models and Novel Mixtures: The Concept of Genre in Byzantine Funerary Literature from Photios to Eustathios of Thessalonike
• Chapter 2: The Conflict between Scholarios and Plethon: Religion and Communal Identity in Early Modern Greece
• Chapter 3: De Man, the Woman, and Her Writing: Transcendence and/or Defacement in Elisavet Moutzan-Martinengou’s Autobiography
• Chapter 4: The Poetics of Mimicry: Pitzipios’ ‘O Πίθηκος Ξοùθ and the Beginnings of the Modern Greek Novel
• Chapter 5: ‘There Was Only One Thing Paradoxical About the Man”: An Oblique Perspective on Madness in Four Stories by Georgios M.Vizyenos
• Chapter 6: Promiscuous Texts and Abandoned Readings in the Poetry of C.P.Cavafy
• Chapter 7: Literature as Historiography: The Boxful of Guilt
• Chapter 8: Leaving, Losing, Letting Go: Some Steps in Bilingual Transformations in the Work of Theodor Kallifatides
• Chapter 9: “Return from Greece”: Journey and Homecoming in Two Contemporary Greek Novels
• Chapter 10: Palimpsests of Sappho in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Greece: An Overview
• Notes on Contributors